Memory Wars: Settlers and Natives Remember Washington’s Sullivan Expedition of 1779
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: In A. Lynn Smith’s Memory Wars, the author presents a historical and anthropological study of nineteenth- and twentieth-century memorialization projects commemorating the Sullivan Expedition, a brutal scorched-earth military campaign during the American Revolution. On George Washington’s order, the Continental Army under General John Sullivan invaded Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) territory and razed dozens of towns, villages, and vast acres of farmland in western New York and Northeastern Pennsylvania. What emerges in this book are three separate memories of this brutal history, all of which continue to shape community identity today.The book is organized in three parts. Part 1 focuses on the history of the campaign and its memorialization from the mid-nineteenth century through the 150th anniversary in 1929. Part 2 is a presentation of the author’s field work in these present-day descendant communities. Part 3 explores some Indigenous perspectives on these memorials and identifies local Indigenous museums and cultural institutions in New York.Following a brief overview of Sullivan’s campaign in the introduction, part 1 of the book focuses on the “memory entrepreneurs” (31) who, through the creation of public memorials from the 1870s to the late 1920s, invented their own versions of the history of two major events in the Sullivan campaign, the Battle of Wyoming in Pennsylvania and the Battle of Newtown in New York. Through an analysis of newspapers and the records of social organizations and local historical societies, the author reveals the long history of memorials that continues to shape local identity and culture. Therein lies the strength of this book: Memory Wars reveals just how important local history is to public and academic historians seeking to understand identity formation and to redress their own institutional or social complicity in the erasure of Indigenous history and colonial violence. As the author writes in chapter 8 (which I suggest reading as both introduction and conclusion to part 1), “to fully capture the stakes involved in settler-colonial public history projects, we need to consider local context” (211).In Pennsylvania (chapters 1–3), memorials erected to the Battle of Wyoming in the 1870s–1920s were informed less by the realities of the Sullivan campaign and more by the centuries-long contestation between local communities of Connecticut “Yankees” and Pennsylvania “Pennamites.” During the battle, a force composed of militia Yankees and American continental troops, after misinterpreting an order as a call for retreat, were cut down by an allied coalition force of Pennamites, Iroquois, Delawares, and British regulars. Afterward dubbed the “Wyoming Massacre,” the battle was spun not only as proof of stereotypical Indian barbarity, most famously in the popular folklore of Esther Montour, or Queen Esther, an Indigenous woman who supposedly executed more than a dozen militiamen with a rock, but also as proof that the Pennamites were on the wrong side of history. When future groups began to memorialize this battle in the late nineteenth century, elite white organizations like local historical societies and chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution and Colonial Dames repeated those narratives with little adjustment. The result was the permanent infusion of a Yankee memory into the landscape, coupled with myths of Indigenous erasure and violence, that still shapes local identity and memory of the American Revolution today.In New York (chapters 4–7), the story is quite different. Perhaps owing to the many Indigenous reservations in New York and the fact that Newtown was the only pitched battle of Sullivan’s campaign, New Yorkers have a different vision of this history. The Sullivan campaign was of little interest to white New Yorkers until the centennial celebration of the American Revolution in 1876 when, while casting about for examples of New York’s unique history, they found the Sullivan campaign and rebranded it the Sullivan-Clinton campaign (145–48) to recognize General James Clinton, the scion of a famed New York family, who was minorly involved in the campaign. Then in the 1920s, State Historian Alexander C. Flick built on that New York-centric energy to create the largest memorialization of the war. He worked with organizations to erect memorials, hosted events, and even invited Haudenosaunee peoples to participate in the commemoration of the Battle of Newtown, a preposterous request made in response to a recent spate of Iroquoian land-grab efforts by the federal government, state government, and private companies. This critical reframing of history came together in Flick’s Pageant of Decision in 1929 (chapter 7), a multiday sesquicentennial celebration of the American Revolution that culminated in a reenactment of the Newtown battle replete with white men in racist Indian costume. From that moment on, future New Yorkers in the region would inherit a history of Sullivan’s campaign that was designed to celebrate a unique New York battle, the origins of the state’s inevitable and legitimate westward expansion, and an Indigenous history that was impossible to ignore yet never quite fit into those otherwise patriotic narratives.Part 2 of the book is an ethnographic look at these memorials and their influence on communities today. These chapters are the culmination of field work conducted in the region since 2012 and includes the author’s interviews with locals and attendance at public commemorations, reenactments, and festivals celebrating the history of the Battles of Wyoming (chapter 10) and Newtown and other aspects of New York history (chapter 11). This chapter reveals that, despite some recent local variation, the dominant Yankee narrative persists in Pennsylvania, as does the ambiguity that characterized the commemorations in New York. While some locals seek change (chapter 12), the inertia caused by habit and tradition tends to slow efforts to reinterpret a memorial landscape dominated by these peculiar settler memories.Yet as part 3 aims to show, the true disrupters are the Indigenous nations themselves. The book ends with a brief look at Indigenous thought leaders and Haudenosaunee cultural centers and museums and explains the accepted logic of the importance of confronting the long-buried histories of “true genocide” (293). Writ broadly, these institutions seek to disrupt the settler colonial erasure of Indigenous history (chapter 13) that characterizes the settler colonial narratives so deeply embedded in Pennsylvania and New York memory.This book reminds us of the importance of local history in understanding the broad sweep of settler colonial erasure, and it does that quite well. While careful readers will note that not all the questions the book raises, whether written or inferred by the cited scholarly literature, are addressed in footnotes or body, this is a minor issue that does not detract from the overall strength of the book. The author also mentions the importance of Indigenous perspectives yet stays away from delving too deeply into them. With the author’s strong foundation in the literature on decolonization and settler colonialism, as well as a chapter dedicated to the way “Natives Remember” (book subtitle) the Sullivan campaign, it is somewhat surprising—and a bit unfulfilling—to see the author keep at arm’s length Indigenous institutional perspectives on this history. The last chapter addresses this topic but, excepting some powerful remarks by a colleague, mostly does not discuss the Sullivan campaign. Instead, it focuses on more general efforts to present Indigenous perspectives to the public. These institutions are doing important work, to be sure, but it is hardly a new insight for scholars of this topic.Overall, this book will be of great interest to an interdisciplinary audience of scholars, public historians, and residents of both Pennsylvania and New York. Within its pages is a nuanced treatment of a complex history that continues to shape regional identity today.
Source: Pennsylvania history
Author: John C. Winters
Institution: University of Southern Mississippi
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4409574798